For the first time in Germany, the SCHIRN is presenting a comprehensive insight into the work of the Filipino-Canadian artist and filmmaker and is showing several works, including her latest work Search for Life. Diptych (2024-2025).
The impressive cinematic installations by Stephanie Comilang (*1980, Toronto, Canada) oscillate between documentary and poetic narrative in a captivating way. Man and nature, homeland and diaspora, rituals and utopias are the recurring themes of Comilang's multi-layered narratives about the future and the past, which the artist herself calls "science fiction documentaries".
She delves deeply into contexts and combines her research into historical facts with fictional elements and biographical experiences. She devotes herself to the everyday lives of Filipino housemaids in Hong Kong or Thai migrants in Germany as well as sailors on cargo ships or the tradition of pearl fishing. In her elaborately produced films, which she repeatedly relates to textile works and sculptural objects in expansive installations, the artist illuminates colonial and postcolonial entanglements and explores the effects of mobility, labor and capital on social and cultural contexts.
September 25, 2025 to January 4, 2026
